Play Hawken

There are only a few games from E3 that I can say without a doubt I’m dying to play, for the first time or again and again. Hawken was my second appointment at E3, and after a full day on the show floor, it’s the one game I’ve played that I can guarantee that I would play every day…forever.

Though this was a very early build of the game, the graphics are stunning. The Unreal Engine can be pushed pretty hard, and Hawken takes advantage of it. From the cockpits to the exterior, the mechs are very detailed, and having different cockpit HUDs for different mechs gives each mech its own unique feel. The game itself ran very smoothly on what we believe was a GeForce GTX 560 Ti, an unequivocally good sign at this stage in development.

Hawken consistently and continually amazes me. That a game this beautiful can come out of a small indie developer leaves me with hope for the entire video game industry.

The reason why I’m really interested int this game is because it shows the power of indie development. Hawken is a work of love from a small team, who created the game using Epic Games’ Unreal Development Kit (UDK). Over months of work, and the help of Youtube and social media, interest in the project began buzzing, until finally the game was picked up by Meteor Entertainment, who raised over $10 million to fund the game. It’s another happy story of independent development that have been taking place lately, showing how the industry is slowly evolving into something new and very exciting.